Flowable packaging materials are a form of dunnage which are now typically manufactured of expanded or extruded polystyrene or organic starch based product in various preselected shapes, such as a figure "8" or an "S" shape. The materials now in use are intended to provide readily flowable, light-weight dunnage of high volumetric efficiency and good strength in compression. The cost and ease of handling flowable packaging materials permit them to be used with great advantage over other types of packaging because an article to be protected within an outer container can very quickly be surrounded with an encompassing cushion of loose fill, at very low added cost and with virtually no, or very low, shipping penalty.
Large users of flowable packaging materials have their materials delivered by large trucks. The material is then blown through a mass delivery system. Individual users typically receive their materials in plastic bags of approximately 15 cubic feet or less capacity. Most typically, an overhead storage bag or hopper (or alternatively referred to herein as a dispenser bag) is then built above a dispensing location, and the bag or hopper feeds the loose fill by gravity down into the area of use. To fill the bag or hopper with material, the bag or hopper must be lowered to be filled or a ladder must be employed to load either small quantities (in the recycling case) or large quantities (in the case of preparations for dispensing for shipping purposes). Many large scale systems, (as further described herein) have been designed to solve loose fill handling for dispensing purposes. To date, however, there has been little attention paid to the small end user who also has material handling problems although on a smaller scale.
For large shippers who package with flowable material, a main concern is the efficient transport of a large volume of material from the storage location to the dispensing location. U.S. Pat. No. 4,799,830 to Fuss describes such a system wherein one or more air blowers are used to feed flowable material through large air plenums to a dispensing station over a hopper which collects spilled material for recycling. U.S. Pat. No. 4,167,235 to Green describes a similar system having a large storage bag that feeds a plurality of dispensing bags via an air conveying system. Neither of these systems, however, is particularly suitable for shippers or their customers who receive flowable packaging material with incoming packages and who must deal with the mess of emptying the incoming packages of their contents as well as the cushioning loose fill packaging material.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,947,903 to Beckwith describes a material recovery apparatus that purports to solve this latter problem. The apparatus includes an overhead bin for storing recovered loose fill material, a vacuum assembly including a container inside the bin having a hinged bottom door for initially receiving the vacuumed material, a suction hose for picking up the loose fill, and a linkage for maintaining the bottom door closed during vacuuming, but which releases the door when the vacuum is off permitting the recovered material in the container to fall into the bin below. Use of such an apparatus enables a user to clean up spilled material or to recover material from incoming boxes. The apparatus, however, has a number of disadvantages. It takes up a large amount of room and may be unsuitable for storage areas that do not have raised ceilings. Storage capacity of the bin is reduced in view of the necessity of the separate container within the bin and the use of the hinged door that takes up even further space in the bin. The apparatus is also unable to continuously fill an empty bin prior to starting a large dispensing operation. In other words, the bin must be loaded one containerfull at a time, taking many operations to fill the dispenser.
It should, therefore, be appreciated that there is still a need for a compact, quiet, light-weight and easily assembled and maintained loose fill recovery and dispensing assembly. Such a device should also maximize the storage capacity of the dispensing bag and be readily adaptable to either the recovering process or the dispensing process. The present invention satisfies this need.